Renowned German novelist Günter Grass openly criticized communist East Germany in 1961 for building the Berlin Wall, ostensibly to prevent West Germans from infiltrating the country. In reality, the wall was more effective at preventing East Germans from defecting. While extreme, Grass’ case was not unique. For 40 years, the Stasi wiretapped homes, bugged phones, and encouraged people to come forward with information about potential government dissenters. Today, the Stasi Records Archives, housed throughout Germany, are so vast that if measured end to end, they would span 111 kilometers. Following the reunification of Germany, government leaders made those records public. They assumed that most people living in former East Germany would want to find out if a file on them existed and, if so, read it. Knowledge, it was widely believed, would help people reclaim their life stories. The East German regime controlled so many aspects of people’s lives, says cognitive psychologist and decision scientist Ralph Hertwig of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Officials could decide whether someone in the country could go to university, or get a person fired from their job without explanation. They could arrest people in stealth so that their loved ones had no way of knowing where they had gone. Why would people not want to know what prompted such decisions or, perhaps, who betrayed them?
2023-05-16 08:07:18
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